Chilocardamum is a small genus of four herbaceous cress-like species of plants in the family Brassicaceae, only found growing in Patagonia, southern Argentina.
It was first described in 1924 by the German botanist Otto Eugen Schulz.[1] The first known species, Ch. patagonicum, was initially classified as a Sisymbrium by Carlo Luigi Spegazzini in 1897.[3][4] The other three species were more recently moved to this genus from Sisymbrium by the Iraqi botanist Ihsan Ali Al-Shehbaz, when he resurrected the genus in 2006.[5] Dimitria was a monotypic genus created by the Chilean botanist Pierfelice Ravenna to house Ch. onuridifolium in 1972;[6] now considered a synonym of the genus Chilocardamum,[2] it was already synonymised with Sisymbrium by the Argentine botanist M. C. Romanczuk in 1981.[6]
Chilocardamum is quite similar in fruit and flower to Zuloagocardamum and Weberbauera. It is distinguished by having trichomes which are branched and dendritic, rarely with a few simple trichomes in the indumentum, the basal leaves are sessile and linear or awl-shaped, the stems are elongated and have cauline leaves, the inflorescence is an ebracteate raceme which is longer than the basal leaves, and seeds without mucilage. The fruit are non-curved, linear siliques which are not torulose.[7]
The genus is endemic to southern Argentina.[2][3]
As of 2017, the four species accepted in the Plants of the World Online database, and in the Flora del Conosur, are:[2][3]
Chilocardamum is a small genus of four herbaceous cress-like species of plants in the family Brassicaceae, only found growing in Patagonia, southern Argentina.
